Camarades

Bill Douglas – the director – might have been born to tell this story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs; his own Scottish childhood had been something of a martyrdom to working class deprivation and poverty.

I vaguely knew about these Tolpuddle Martyrs from school history: how 6 humble farm labourers in rural Dorset of the 1830′s had dared to form a union and ask for higher wages , and as a sorry consequence got deported to Australia.

This "poor mans epic" was a flop in the cinema and got dropped after a couple of weeks, never, or hardly ever to be seen again. I can sort of see why it didn't have general commercial appeal.

At times Douglas's way of telling the story gets in the way, slows down, or even just undercooks, dedramatises – deliberately? – the films propulsion, pace, purpose. I suppose i've been too used to being spoon-fed glossy costume dramas on prime-time BBC 1: narrative elements – exposition, explanation, transition – are all smoothly storyboarded in to give you the slick entertainment experience this film seems resolutely not to want to give you.

It could be that Douglas wasn't experienced enough as a film maker to make a grand epic drama (he'd only made his small-scale low-budget autobiographical Trilogy previously) The toil in the soil, the squelch of the mud, the hovel-like existence of downtrodden agricultural workers – not many rights or entitlements, very little power, hardly any choice in the matter – you do get a sense for all of that in this film. It feels like a dirty life, basic survival existence, punctuated by simple "entertainments – lantern shows, travelling fairs, communal singsongs, folk dancing – with life's inevitable fall ameliorated via mutuality, familiarity, warm comradeship.

There's a lot of film technique on show, which might be Douglas's self-conscious need to make it look stylistically different, uniquely his own: lots of long shots and slow shots, and focusing on still faces looking straight into the camera; abrupt and occasionally jarring transitions; using a lantern show to pick out salient features in the narrative – which i found a bit irritating (too fairy-tale like – i craved more of the nitty-gritty squelchy mud realism!) The last third of the film moves to Australia; we've already had 2 hours or so – and another hour gets tacked on. The shift to somewhere else breaks the intensity of focus; the immersion in that localised rural reality of rainy dirty Dorset becomes too dissipated. I felt most of this Australia section could have been edited down into a 5 minute montage.

After watching this film i was curious to find out more about what happened on Google. I read several articles.

So i guess if a film has inspired me to want to know more, get further "inside" the history of these Tolpuddle Martyrs – then as a historical document its succeeded. But as a Film film perhaps less so. I doubt i'd want to watch it again.

Still, i feel enlisted as one of Douglas's "comrades" now. I'm one of them. One of him.

likewise..this is a truly great bit of film making. I have never seen a film before or since that gives such an interesting and atmospheric account of life in the English countryside of the 19th century. Also a film with a compassionate social message with strong characters that looks at what "ordinary" people can achieve when they work together. This is a film that should be issued on DVD and i would urge whomever is in charge of such things to find a way of doing this. It would appeal to many people from film buffs through to history students. I originally had to watch the film as part of a history course and it really brought that period of history to life for me.

There were such possibilities and opportunities to be grasped in the making of this film. There was a marvellous cast (I omit Keith Allen, whom I loathe and as for Barbara Windsor-she was totally out of place here) who made the best of what they could with a less than expansive script. There was some beautiful cinematography too in parts and a real feeling of the period in the costumes and sets but and I am reluctant to say this, a great deal of this movie was too slow and could have benefited from some judicious cutting. I am a lover of this kind of story and subject matter so I felt nonplussed at times as to what was going on in one or two scenes. The film was far too long and slow to really hold one's attention. I was not expecting a glossy Merchant/Ivory type production but something much more gritty and realistic which Comrades delivered to some extent but that was not enough for it to be truly absorbing. I could not get over the left wing bias that the film carried either- it was a natural result of the subject matter of course. One thing I did like was the refusal to use a lot of exposition and explanation in the script but I think it may have got in the way of filmgoers who did not know their history, understanding the whole thing. Overall rather a disappointing film, a story which could have been told so much better and more succinctly.

Sorry that this is posted a little late but Film4 showed 'Comrades' at 12.20am on March 20th 2009, complete with advertisements unfortunately.

The announcer said "now for a rare screening of a British epic", too right, I estimate it hasn't been on TV for 20 years.

They do tend to show films more than once so it might be repeated in the next few weeks, probably in a graveyard slot again.

Not sure if I enjoyed it as much as the first time around but the location filming and Dorset landscapes are stunning.

Seeing as they released the Bill Douglas 'Trilogy' on DVD last year perhaps a release for this overlooked epic is in the pipeline?

The earlier review "A Horrid Experience" prompted me to join this forum in order to offer a somewhat different view.

This film shows the struggle of the Tolpuddle Martyrs to try to gain just non-starvation level wages for their work. What they went through at the beginning of the trade union movement in the UK has benefited everyone since; and their struggle should be an inspiration to anyone with the slightest interest in social justice. I don't agree that it is boring. Yes it is a long film (3hrs) and is not packed with action sequences and special effects. It was made by Bill Douglas, who has a matchless reputation for excellent films that slowly build up a superb evocation of time and place. Even if it was deadly boring, the discomfort of sitting to watch it a little bit longer surely can't match the discomfort meted out to the Tolpuddle men and their families?